Zambezia (1986), XIII (ii).THE MOLE AND POSITION OF WOMEN INPEE-COLONIAL AND COLONIAL ZIMBABWE*ANGELA P. CHEATERDepartment of Sociology, University of ZimbabweAT THE OUTSET, three problems (one theoretical and two methodological) mustbe faced concerning the title and content of this article which was requested for aworkshop on The Role of Women in National Reconstruction and Develop-ment. Firstly, I was asked to speak on 'the role and position* of women Š both inthe singular. Surely this singularity would never be regarded as appropriate if wewere talking about men, who have 'roles' and 'positions' Š in the plural? Why,then, are women so limited, conceptually, in the social order? Clearly, women doperform different roles (each of which has its own specific labour tasks) in societyŠ reproductive, occupational, religious, and so on Š as do men. Equally clearly,individual women, like individual men, are each a social compound of all theirdifferent roles. As Radcliffe-Brown (1952, 193) puts it, an individual, as a socialperson, has a 'social personality' which encompasses all of his or her socialrelations with others. But in the case of women, the concept of 'woman' itselfseems to provide a 'modal social personality' in a way that the concept of 'man'does not. In this article, then, I shall explore the possibility that the title I wasasked to speak on is itself an outcome of our history; that this singular model ofwomen has resulted from the superimposition, on the indigenous cultural modelsof this country, of a dominantly male, rather Victorian, British view of womenand their appropriate place in society.The second problem is concerned with evidence: most of the evidenceconcerning the pre-colonial situation in particular is indirect, extrapolated fromwhat is currently classified as 'tradition' or 'custom'. It is not at all certain thattoday's 'custom' existed in the past, as Beach (1980) so often infers. Indeed,sometimes we may wonder whether it exists in the present, for the gap betweenideal norm and statistical norm, between what people say should happen andwhat they actually do, may be so large as to exclude all but a small minority fromthe practice of a 'custom' that everyone agrees is 'customary'. To take one Shona*Presented at the Workshop on The Role of Women in National Reconstruction andDevelopment, sponsored and organized by Unesco and the Zimbabwe Ministry of CommunityDevelopment and Women's Affairs, Harare, November 1985. I am grateful to my colleagues forcomments on an earlier draft of this paper, presented at a staff seminar in the Department ofSociology, University of Zimbabwe, and in particular to Rudo Gaidzanwa and Raymond Apthorpe,who read the manuscript itself.65THE ROLE AND POSITION OF WOMENexample: the 'cow of motherhood' (mombe youmai) is ostensibly an obligatorypart of brideweaith, yet only a minority of women with married daughtersactually owns one (Holleman, 1952, 352; Cheater, 1983). Clearly, customs asideal norms are not necessarily binding on individual behaviour and we should,perhaps, ask what exactly 'custom' means in practice.The third problem is also methodological, and is concerned with culturalperceptions. Most anthropological and historical information that we have aboutwomen in pre-colonial and colonial Zimbabwe has been produced by men, oftenof a different culture, and while their major biases are frequently obvious, thesubtleties of different cultural and gender perspectives are, by definition, less easyto identify. On this issue, of course, I am not the best-qualified person to be talkingon the traditions of my compatriots into which I have not myself been socialized.Yet perhaps an outsider's view may also have its conceptual advantages based onthis social distance.WOMEN IN PRE-COLONIAL ZIMBABWEThe literature on Zimbabwe's different ethnic groupings is notably uneven withrespect to its coverage of women in the pre-colonial era. So while there are somedata of interest on Shona women, from the literature in English one might wellbelieve that Ndebele women were only craftswomen, for their other roles arealmost totally ignored. However, by comparison with small minorities such as theTonga, Venda and Lemba, we know much about the Ndebele! Perforce,therefore, I shall have to draw most of my specific examples from Shona sources.If we look first at the relations of production in pre-colonial Zimbabwe, itseems that women were excluded from access to land in their own right, althoughthey could and did invest in livestock (which of course required land on which tograze), the proceeds of their own skilled labour in non-agricultural pursuits(Beach, 1980). Although women were economically active in agricultural as wellas craft production, and had some control over grain stores, they did not controlthe means of production in agriculture and metallurgy, but instead providedmuch of the labour required for these occupations (Beach, 1980; Mackenzie,1975). One of the major reasons for the exclusion of women from direct controlof the means of production and the family product lay in the payment ofbrideweaith (room, lobolo), which not only transferred rights in a woman'slabour and reproductive capacity from her own family to that of her husband, butalso indemnified her family for this loss. For these reasons, it is possible to regardwomen in pre-colonial society as comprising an equivalent to the class of labourin industrial systems of production. This class equivalence helps to explain otherfeatures of women's positions in the pre-colonial system.With reference to all the separate ethnic components of pre-colonialANGELA CHEATER87Zimbabwean society, it is true Š with one or two notable exceptions Š that theonly role from which women were systematically excluded was that of formalpolitico-jurai authority which, among other functions, controlled the allocation ofland. The headwomen in Manicaland and Makoede, and the Nehoreka(Charewa) chiefsfalp in the Mutoko district, provide the only recorded exceptionsto this rule of female exclusion from political authority.1 Informally, however, 'itis probable that women always had more say in Sfaona society than was formallyadmitted' (Bourdillon, 1976, 72).However, Shona women did exercise authority in other roles: as mothers,especially over their daughters; as vatete, particularly over the education of theirbrothers' children; as ancestors, over the reproductive capacity of their femaledescendants (although the degree to which women were able to control their ownfecundity is less certain); as producers or service-workers possessing special skills(in pottery or healing, for example), over the proceeds of their own work; asmothers of married daughters for whom room had been paid, over property. Butas property-owners, women experienced more difficulty than men in increasingtheir authority through accumulating property, for, as Holleman (1952, 352)indicates, with respect to the colonial period, 'more often than not the essentialneeds of her children and other blood-relatives will force her to dispose of herstock before they have had time to increase'. Men may indeed have conservedtheir own property holdings as their wives niet such needs from their livestock:certainly today mothers will go to extraordinary lengths to keep their children inschool, long after their husbands have given up trying to find the necessary cash.Even in this matter of property, however, the distribution of a woman's estateafter her death appears to have been justified with reference to her mysticalcapacity, as a spirit, to cause harm, rather than by her natural productive capacityas a worker.Female authority grew over time, in much the same way as did that of men.While the newly-married wife had almost no authority in her husband's home, bythe time she had acquired grandchildren, she had normally become a force to bereckoned with in most if not all matters affecting both her natal family (as tete)and her husband's family (as mother-in-iaw). Commonly, post-menopausalwomen became a type of 'honorary male' in village society, having lost themystical influence associated with menstruation, abandoned domestic responsi-bilities to the work of younger women, and acquired personal property.Nonetheless, their influence tended to remain out of sight, in the private domain:even elderly women did not normally frequent the male world of public decision-making in the dare, This expansion of a woman's authority was related not only1 But the Lovedu of the north-eastern Transvaal, who may be an early Shooa offshoot, have afemale monarchy (Krige and Krige, 1943).68THE ROLE AND POSITION OF WOMENto her own life-cycle but also to the cycles of development experienced by boththe family into which she had been born and that into which she had married. Themost powerful women tended to belong to the most influential families.Arguably the most interesting and ambiguous role of authority occupied bywomen in the pre-coionial period was that of spirit mediumship. Those spiritswho play a prominent part in the public domain, both autochthonous spirits suchas Chaminuka and the mhondoro spirits of deceased chiefs, are predominantlymale. But their mediums, who relay the spirits' messages to the living, were andare as likely to be women as men. The most famous example is, of course,Charwe, the medium of Neeanda, who was executed by the colonial adminis-tration in 1898 for her role in the death of a Native Commissioner during the firstchimurenga.A svikiro or spirit medium lived and still lives a life apart from normal peoplein the 'profane* world. Indeed, some children, both male and female, were and aremarked for religious service from a very early age and never lead a 'normal' life:binga-nyika were (and are?) dedicated to specific mhondoro (Neusu, 1983, 1),while at the central shrines of the Mwari cult the young dancers, both male andfemale (respectively, hossanah and mbonga), were (and are) in a similar position,although they might later be married to senior cult officials in outlying districtsand become mediums for ancestral spirits (midzimu) incorporated into this cult(Daneel, 1970, 49-52). However, many people who later become mediumsmarry and bear children before exhibiting those behavioural symptoms which adiviner will diagnose as being caused by a spirit wanting to 'come out' throughpossession trance. But after this diagnosis has been made, the medium's life is'sacralized'. Ideally he or she will then effectively terminate sexual activity in therole of spouse and move into separate living quarters in order better to meet theneeds of the spirit. Reproduction should cease (although sometimes 'spiritchildren' do appear!), and all other 'normal' domestic chores and child care areundertaken by assistants. (This pattern certainly fitted Charwe, who is reportedby colonial authorities to have had two children, which Neusu (1983) acceptswhile rejecting Mutunhu's (1976) attempt to portray her as a normal marriedwoman.) The medium becomes identified with the spirit, even though his or herbehaviour while possessed is clearly distinguished from that when not possessed.The authority of the spirit overrides the prior social identity of the medium; and itis possible that a skilled medium may even increase the importance, in thespiritual hierarchy, of his or her spirit (Fry, 1976).In the role of spirit medium, then, the fact of being female was and continuesto be irrelevant to the exercise of spiritual authority. At least in part, this is becausethe demands of the male spirit are by definition legitimate, even when theseinterfere with the 'modal social personality' of'woman*. In other parts of Africa,women are reported to use Š and, in terms of their 'normal' roles, perhaps abuseANGELA CHEATER69Štheir possession by male spirits to escape their standardized female identity, orto make demands on their husbands for material goods and special treatment thatare not part of their normal expectations (Lewis, 1971). Religious roles intraditional belief systems therefore afforded and continue to afford exceptionalwomen, who refuse to conform to the standard female 'social personality', anescape route into individualized positions of power as well as authority, based ontraditional religion. A particularly intriguing example in Zimbabwe of women'sinfluence on societal matters from a position of religious authority is given by anearly colonial (male) administrator:As already mentioned, a woman named Wanawo is the present Tswikiro orWamvura. In about the year 1914a male native named Kativu spread the news aroundthe district that he was the proper medium or Newana for the ancestral spirit. Charewa [thefemale chief with whose position Wanawo was associated as medium] complained to me.I had Kativu brought up and ordered him to cease his fraudulent representations. Hecomplied without demur.... Wanawo had behaved herself. She had wielded her powerwith discretion and in the interests of the tribe. She was popular and respected by all, and Iwas not prepared to allow Kativu to interfere and spoil the present satisfactoryarrangement. Naturally the Tswikiro has an all-powerful influence on the people, and thatinfluence may be exercised for good or evil. That the present Wamvura (female medium)has a beneficial influence on her people there is little doubt. The Wabuja are one of themost law-abiding and amenable tribes in Mashonaland, and this is in a great measure dueto the influence of this woman. The Mondoro has declared through her that the laws of theGovernment must be obeyed, and it is pleasing to note that the immediate followers... setthe example by promptly paying in full the whole amount of annual tax due by them onthe day it is demanded. Also all crimes committed in that section are immediately reportedto the proper authority and delinquents are arrested and brought to justice with the leastpossible delay. There is much I could write about this interesting character ... (Morkel,1930, 13).As this example shows, the defenders of religious tradition, whether female ormale mediums, were paradoxically in a position to define and, therefore, tochange that tradition, not least because religious authority overrode and to someextent determined the secular political authority normally wielded by men.However, in this -particular case of the Nehoreka chiefship, secular politicalauthority was also vested in a woman, and it is interesting that she complained tothe colonial authorities about what could be interpreted as a male attempt tocontrol herself rather than the female incumbent of the mediumship.2 In Shonasocieties, it was and is the svikiro of the mhondoro (in both cases, in this instance,usually male) who chooses, in accordance as much with public opinion asancestral validation, a deceased chiefs successor; and who continues to exercise2 Berlyn's (1972) account of the Nehoreka chiefship and its incumbent suggests that some of thereligious aspects previously vested in the medium had fifty years later become part of the Charewa(chiefship) role.70THE ROLE AND POSITION OF WOMENultimate authority, through his or her communication with the chiefly ancestors,over the living chief. Clearly, there was at least one context in traditional society inwhich women could wield essentially political authority, precisely because it wasnot so labelled.One might also note that women's power, as female spirits rather thanmediums, was often associated with rain, including among the Tonga as mpandespirits (Weinrich, 1977). Among the Shona, male spirits also bring rain, but it isinteresting that Kamva's rain-making capacity causes him to be regarded, in partsof the northeast, as the 'wife',bf Dzivaguru (Bourdillon, 1978, 242). Of manyexamples of female raie-making spirits, I shall use only one, the legend of Mureri.The daughter of a chief who spotted stray cattle,-.Mureri was angered by herbrother's appropriation of those cattle and insulted by his action in offering her asmall fragment of the cooked meat from one of them because she was 'only awoman' (Barr, 1946,60). In retaliation, the legend says, Mureri hanged both herbrother's child and herself, but mitigated her action by promising to bring rain toher father's people when requested. Rain is, of course, critical to drylandagriculture, and rain-making is therefore a source of significant power in society.Where female spirits control rain, they contradict the generally powerless positionof ordinary women and provide an alternative model of female capabilities.In a small minority of areas, however, women also wielded political authorityas such. Bazeley (1940, 3) notes that the authority of headwomen in the Mutasaarea was legitimated by the spirit medium of Nyamandota (possibly, but notexplicitly noted in the legends to be, a woman?). He notes further, with explicitdisapproval, the 'irregular marriage customs' and loose morals' of these women,all of whom were the daughters of chiefs, which he saw as 'extremely badexamples to all the Manyika women' (1940, 4). This view was fairly commonamong White settlers generally and, as Gaidzanwa (1985) shows, now alsoinforms Black stereotypes about women who do not fit the 'modal socialpersonality'. Ranger (1985) has noted how early White administrators werehorrified by the extent of female independence among the Ndebele in the 1890s,and set about making divorce more difficult by insisting on high bridewealthpayments. Sloan (1923, 61) remarked on the fact that it was the 'morally weakamongst the native women who are, for the present, forced by their economicsituation to be the leaders of women's thought'.But, as Bazeley (1940,4) noted, 'if their morals were weak, their capacity forgovernment was exceptionally strong'. He examined nine headwomen in theUmtali and Inyanga (now Mutare and Nyanga) districts as specific examples,showing that two were not replaced after death primarily because their land hadbeen taken by Whites; three were simply not replaced after death; two werereplaced by men; and two were then still alive. The tradition of female authoritywas, as Bazeley (1940, 3) put it, 'an institution which is rapidly disappearing'.ANGELA CHEATER71In summary, then, it would appear that Š in at least some situations inpre-colonial Zimbabwe, which extended into colonial times Š women's roleswere not only differentiated but included those of religious and political authority,notwithstanding their general exclusion from areas of secular decision-makingreserved for men. So what has happened to interrupt this story and tosuperimpose on women the modal female 'social personality' which appears to becharacteristic today? I shall argue that the main cause has been ideological,notwithstanding important material changes which have affected women inZimbabwean society during the colonial period.WOMEN IN COLONIAL ZIMBABWETwo important strands of history must be separated during the period 1890-1980: on the one hand, what happened to indigenous women; and on the other,the impact on the colonial system of immigrant women from many diversecultures. The latter issue I shall ignore here.Many factors external to traditional society influenced indigenous womenduring the colonial period. Education, migration to the towns, urbanization andreligious conversion all affected women's roles in their families, larger kingroupings, and the economy (Hollemao, 1958). We should note that both policy(e.g. in the provision of predominantly bachelor housing on mines and in towns)and family attitudes (e.g. concerning the relative benefits to be gained fromeducating boys as opposed to girls) combined to lessen female exposure to theseforces of change, although, as van Onselen (1980) indicates, a minority of womenresponded to these changes from their inception. However, in keeping with mybasically Marxist interests, for the purposes of this paper I have chosen to examinein detail two interconnected influences different from these well-worn themes:women's access to the means of production and subsistence, on the one hand; andon the other, the laws governing their property relations. For it seems to me thatthe ideological development of the modal female 'social personality' during thecolonial period must be related to the ways in which women were rendered moreeconomically dependent upon men.Here I shall not dwell on the mechanisms among Zimbabwe's peasantrywhereby male rights to land were upheld against those of women in legislationsuch as the Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951. Gaidzanwa (1981) has shownvery clearly how rights to land among peasant wives married polygynously, aswell as those of widows and divorcees with dependants, were curtailed by thisAct. At best, women's landholdings were one-third the size of those of men, and inthe case of seventh or subsequent wives, they simply did not exist. The holdings ofall wives, whether monogamously or polygynously married, were confirmed assecondary: for even though the wives entered into the calculation of the size of72THE ROLE AND POSITION OF WOMENholding, the holding itself was registered in the name of the husband. In similarfashion, by the practice of issuing only one dipping card for each 'family' orhousehold, the livestock holdings of subordinate members of the family were(and still are) regarded as falling under the jurisdiction of the household head. Theideological legacy of these practices, as well as the practices themselves, constitutepart of today's 'problems' of women.Instead of concentrating on 'traditional' relations of production in peasantareas, here I wish to look at new forms of property, including freehold land, whichwere in pre-eolqnial times foreign to Zimbabwe's traditional cultures; and at newlaws. These forms of property and the laws governing them were both introducedduring the colonial period and might, therefore, have been expected to escapeclassification as 'customary', as did Christian marriages; but they did not.There is, of course, a close connection between property relations and the law,and Bourdillon (1975) has shown how, during the colonial period, Shona'customary' law was generally rigidified and manipulated by the Administrationsuch that it could not adjust to changing societal circumstances in the ways that alllegal systems normally do. This induced rigidity is foreign to Shona custom, asHolleman (1952, x) testifies in noting that general principles of customary lawwere in their application extremely flexible. In the remainder of this paper, I shallexamine one particularly important example of how this manipulation of'custom' was achieved within the framework of statutory law, with significantconsequences for the property relations of Black women in Zimbabwe.Let me start by noting that particularly educated Black women who marriedby Christian rites under statute law (the African Marriages Act) and whocontributed to building up family property with their husbands have often felt thatthey, rather than their husband's patrikie, should have a legal (as well as a moral)claim to his estate after his death. Colonial legislators did recognize, when the1930 Land Apportionment Act created freehold land title specifically for Blacks,that such an important change in property relations would require legaladjustment with respect to inheritance, which is why the Native Wills Act waspassed in 1933. But this Act merely permitted property to be devolved by will: itdid not change customary inheritance. In the absence of a will, property and theguardianship of children would still devolve according to customary law. Thisremains the case today, but these issues of inheritance rights to property arecurrently under review in our (predominantly male) legislature.Of many cases of disputed inheritance, one in particular illuminates colonialattitudes to African women with exceptional clarity. Dokotera v. The Master ofthe High Court & Others, 1957 R. & N. 697, also established Š as the colonialadministration intended it to Š an important precedent in the case law of thiscountry. If we examine this case in detail, we shall see precisely how colonialANGELA CHEATER73attitudes subordinated women even when the law could, as it stood, havepermitted their further emancipation.In 1955, a policeman died in hospital, following an emergency appen-dicectomy. Twelve years earlier, in 1943, he and his second wife had jointlybought a freehold farm, registered in his name because only one owner waspermitted in law, but managed by his wife while he continued in urbanemployment. His second marriage had been contracted in church, following thedissolution of his first civil marriage by divorce. He had three daughters, two fromhis first marriage and one from the second, but no sons, and he died intestate,without leaving a will. The Native Commissioner as administrator of his estatetherefore awarded the farm to the deceased man's younger brother, as thecustomary heir to property. In turn, because he already owned a farm himself, thisman ceded the farm to his eldest son. The widow, who received a cash gratuityand the movable property in her husband's estate, appealed against thedistribution of the immovable property. This appeal occurred in three phases,firstly to the Native Commissioner, then to the Master of the High Court, andfinally to the Appeal Court against the Master's distribution.The first appeal, to the Native Commissioner, took the form of amemorandum signed by the widow's father, submitted on her behalf before sheand her relatives sought professional legal advice.3 This memorandum, which Ireproduce verbatim below, attempted to initiate a rational discourse with thecolonial administration but, as the Native Commissioner's comments show,4failed to achieve change on the basis of legal rationality:It was reported at this meeting that the estate was lodged with the Master of the High Courtfor distribution and explained that any estate over the value of £200 is not administered byNative Law only but comes in European Law also. At this meeting the NativeCommissioner Hartley was appointed Executor Dative of the Estate, I understand M orhis son was declared heir over the estate where it was believed the Native Law took place.My representatives and I have now come to the conclusion that there is no Native Law andCustom could be administered [sic] in the estate of the late Dokotera as the following factswill prove. Dokotera had deserted the following of Native Law and Custom. It will beinteresting to discuss seriatim:1. Dokotera married H's daughter and promised a number of head of cattle asdemanded by the father of the girl as lobola. Dokotera did not pay these head ofcattle until his death. This does not constitute the validity of Native Law andCustom (I take strong exception).The Native Commissioner replied: 'Lobola is not an essential requirement to a3 I am grateful to the former Ministry of Internal Affairs for permitting me access to farm files,one of which contained this memorandum.4 Memorandum, confidential farm file, Chegutu District Office.74THE ROLE AND POSITION OF WOMENmarriage by Christian rites. Lobola was finally paid at the date of death. Dokoterais the owner of the farm Š if his wife and offspring were taken away from him ongrounds of non-payment of lobola, the farm would still evolve [sic] to D'syounger brother M and his offspring.'2. In 1943 Dokotera buys a farm in conjunction with his wife, both contribute moneyfor buying of the farm. This is not in conformity with Native Law and Custom.On this point the Native Commissioner's response shows legal irresponsibility:'Dokotera is "appointed" owner and M [his widow] might have trouble provingthat she paid in money Š but this is not a material point to the issue' (emphasisadded).3. Dokotera appointed his wife to manage the farm while he himself was working. Hiswife attended many agricultural courses in Government Experimental Farm asgood as many farm managers. This is against Native Law and Custom,Here the Native Commissioner's answer is hardly endearing: 'It is good nativecustom for a wife to work in the fields doing light agricultural work and to beappointed manager is a natural evolution.'4. On the farm Dokotera supplies only implements. The wife supplies all cattle on thefarm, they do ploughing, milking, practical [sic] whole farm maintenance. This isagainst Native Law and Custom.'Correct,' noted the Native Commissioner, *no cattle on the farm Š but again notmaterial'5. The two parties were married by Christian rites.'Whether the present parties are living according to native custom or not, isimmaterial, law says'. This response by the Native Commissioner, invokingsection 14 of the Native Marriages Act of 1952, appears to ignore section 4(i) ofthe earlier Native Law and Courts Act (No. 33 of 1937), which envisaged thepossibility that customary law might be inapplicable in cases where traditionalculture had been abandoned.6. Buying of land does not come under Native Law.To this simple truth, there is offered no answer, for there can be none.Therefore in the light of these facts it becomes marriage by communal [sic] of property,partnership, etc. We deny that there is existence of the Native Law or Custom in this case.All these facts are repungnant to Native Law.There is no reason why Dokotera's wife should not succeed to husband's propertywhile she has been managing the farm for the 14 years.ANGELA CHEATER75As shown above, this first appeal fell on deaf ears, so the widow and her kietook the case to a firm of solicitors, who entered into dispute with the Master ofthe High Court, who had to approve the Native Commissioner's distribution ofthe estate. They argued that, since customary law did not cover the ownership andtransmission of land, distribution of the land should be effected in terms of statuterather than customary law. The Master of the High Court concurred with thislegal opinion, but the widow did not inherit the farm because section 7 of theNative Wills Act of 1933 specified that, in cases of intestacy, the heir at customarylaw should succeed in his individual capacity to immovable property. In otherwords, custom had been extended in a very specific way by statute to cover apreviously unknown circumstance.The widow's solicitors then argued that, in accordance with the normalprecedence of statutes, the Native Wills Act of 1933 had in effect been amendedby the later passage of the Deceased Estates Succession Amendment Act of 1954.The Master's reply is instructive:It is contended by you that this provision in the Native Wills Act has been modified by theDeceased Estates Succession Amendment Act, but a study of the provisions of this Actindicates that it was meant to apply only to people subject to the Roman-Dutch Law onintestacy, i.e. Europeans, and in this connection I point out that the whole of its provisionsare designed to amend the common law relating to intestacy, and not intended to codifythe law generally. I am of the view that it was not intended to affect the native law ofintestacy .. .5There was, in fact, absolutely no reference to race in the Deceased EstatesSuccession Amendment Act. As the appeal judge later noted: 'it is not possible tosay that the language of [the Deceased Estates Succession Amendment Act] initself shews that the Act was not conceived by the legislature to apply to nativespouses' (Dokotera v. The Master, 1957 R. & N. 703-4). For this reason, as wellas those discussed previously, the widow's solicitors decided to take the Master'sdecision on appeal to the High Court. This appeal was to become a cause celebrefor those who did not wish to see custom modified too greatly. As the Masterpointed out in a letter to the Native Commissioner concerned:Bearing in mind the value of the assets in the estate and also that the point raised is one ofconsiderable legal importance to the Native Department and also to this office, now thatAfricans are being permitted to own land individually, I feel that we should perhaps regardit as a test case , . .6When this dispute entered its third and final phase of appeal, to the HighLetter, confidential farm file, Chegutu District Office, 11 April 1957.Letter, confidential farm file, Chegutu District Office, 11 May 1957.76THE ROLE AND POSITION OF WOMENCourt, the appeal judge's reasoning in his decision to uphold the lower decisionwas even more instructive than the original decision itself. The argument laid outby the widow's lawyers, the appeal judge said,loses most of its force when it is appreciated that the provisions of [the Deceased EstatesSuccession Amendment Act], favouring a surviving spouse as an heir ab intestato, arereally a re-enactment with variations of similar provisions which existed in [the 1929Deceased Estates Succession Act] and therefore [the Native Wills Act], which took effectin 1933, is essentially the later statute, ,. .A perusal of [the Deceased Estates Succession Amendment Act] creates B.prima faciedoubt as to whether the legislature could have intended that statute to apply to nativespouses. It is not clear whether 'a child's portion' is a term appropriate to marriagesbetween natives, in view of the well-known inferior status of women in native life(Dokotera v. The Master, 1957 R. & N. 703).The appeal judge finally decided that the 1929 Act made general provision for therights of surviving spouses, which were overridden by the specific provisions ofthe 1933 Native Wills Act when applied to Blacks and that since the 1954legislation made no specific mention of race, the 1933 Act would continue toapply to Blacks.Here, I think, we have incontrovertible evidence of precisely how coloniallaw mummified 'custom5 Š indeed, how it created previously non-existent'custom' concerning immovable property Š against the wishes of Blacks,especially Black women. Three White men, two in executive posts and one in thejudiciary, not only shared a certain view of 'the role and position' of Blackwomen, as the tone of their comments reveals, but also colluded to entrench theirperceptions in law and administrative practice. Two decades later, the legislaturedominated by the Rhodesian Front reconfirmed this distortion of the process ofsocio-cultural change, when the 1976 Parliamentary Select Committee onTestate and Intestate Succession noted that:Your committee is aware that there is nowadays an increasing number of Africans whofind family and tribal ties irksome and restrictive, particularly professional African women.. .[but] the Tribal authorities do not want to see a wholesale severance of these ties bylegislative action ... [Therefore] none of the recommendations contained in this Reportshould apply to African customary law, and we recommend that customary law shouldnot be changed by legislative direction merely to make it conform to 'western' practices(Rhodesia, 1976, 22, 23, paras. 57, 59).This manipulation and creation of 'custom' was integrally connected with theperpetuation of racial differences by the colonial administration, but, as a veryimportant side-effect, it also increased the subordination of women to men inAfrican society by restricting women's independent capacity to control pro-ductive resources. In turn, this subordination has become, during the past century,ANGELA CHEATER77part of the contemporary ideology which sees women as somehow being all thesame, having the same undifferentiated social personality of 'female*.CONCLUSIONThis article has attempted to do several things: to show the relationship, as itaffected women, between property and its political control in both pre-colonialand colonial contexts; to identify some of the fallacies concerning 'custom*, bothin their present form and with reference to a different past reality; and to indicatethe connections between the material and ideological aspects of women's rolesand positions in society.I hope I have shown the inaccuracy Š whether as false consciousness or asoutright lies Š of official colonial representations of the traditional social status ofBlack women. Certainly there were many situations in which women rankedlower than men, but when Child (1958, 69) alleged that 'the emancipation ofAfrican women is an evolutionary process which law cannot control', he waseither being singularly naive or he did not perceive the contradiction between thisstatement and the policy and practices of his superiors, which were reflected veryexplicitly by W.H.H. Nicolle, Secretary for Internal Affairs, in his foreword toChild's own later book. The Royal Charter which legitimized' the occupation ofSouthern Rhodesia, Nicolle said, specified that'careful regard shall always be had to the customs and laws of the class or tribe or nation towhich the [disputing] parties respectively belong . . .'This wise provision gave a lead to subsequent legislation which always sought topreserve, and not interfere with, African tribal law and custom . .,We therefore have the African laws and customs of the various tribes in the countryshowing little basic change; yet reflecting those changes normally expected in any societythat is subject to the influences of modern civilization which cause customs and laws toevolve or change (Child, 1965, i).In showing how White male attitudes and colonial legislation distortedcustomary flexibility, I hope I have shown how the modal Black female 'socialpersonality' was constructed during the colonial period. This construct wasreinforced by the writings of those male anthropologists (see Gelfand, 1973, as aclassic example) who averred a basic acceptance of and satisfaction with theirstatus in society on the part of Black women, at least in areas 'unaffected* byWestern influence. It had some basis in the pre-coloniai situation, and bystrengthening their rights against those of potential female competitors, thisparticular ideological construct was also in the interests of Black men. Theiracceptance of this construct Š and indeed its acceptance by many women Š hasbeen graphically demonstrated by Gaidzanwa (1985), if literature does indeedreflect society's values. It therefore remains for this ideological construction,78THE ROLE AND POSITION OF WOMENtogether with its legal and material underpinnings, to be dismantled in order thatwomen can participate fully in national reconstruction in the new Zimbabwe.ReferencesBARR, Fr. 1946 'Mureri, the rain goddess', NAD A, XXIII, 60-2.BAZELEY, W. 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